Universal 0-3: California Child Care Working Groups

This is an effort to answer the question: What will it take to deliver universal child care for California families with children ages 0 through 3?¹ Working groups convened by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) will leverage diverse perspectives and drive toward answers, realistically and rigorously tackling the challenge of how to make universal 0-3 child care fundable and durable.

Working group participants will include leaders and practitioners from the child care, labor, and business communities, alongside researchers, policymakers, and relevant agencies.

Janet Yellen called child care "a textbook example of a broken market." Every state that looks closely arrives at the same understanding: Families can't afford care, educators can't earn a living delivering it, both at once. California's opportunity is to write the next page.

A universal 0-3 system can help California realize four things at once: 

• Children who spend their most formative years in nurturing, developmentally supportive environments
• Parents who can stay in the jobs and careers they've built
• Educators whose can earn fair wages and build sustainable careers
• Employers who can retain the people they've trained

The impact on parents, educators, and employers is felt in today’s economy. The impact on children is felt over the next 50 years.

California is already paying the costs of a child care system that falls short, in the tens of billions of dollars a year in forgone wages and lost productivity, and in the diminished long-term outcomes of children who miss out on the developmental support their earliest years require.² The question is how California can build a system that works better for children, families, educators, and the broader economy — and what it will take to make that system a reality. 

The Goal

Develop costed, credible recommendations for how universal 0-3 child care can be delivered in California.

¹ “0-3” means children from birth through 47 months — that is, until a child turns four. It covers four single-year cohorts: under one, one, two, and three.

² Chloe Gibbs, Caleb Brobst, T.V. Ninan, and Abigail Sanchez, "The economics of the market for early childhood care and education in California," SIEPR Policy Brief, January 2026 (appendix updated April 2026).